He said that the army retreated from Tal Kalakh, but there were about 10 buses carrying thugs who entered the town on Wednesday. Only a few families are left in Tal Kalakh, he said.

Thousands of people have been arrested since mid-March. Last week, the United Nations said deaths during the protests could number as many as 850.

The crackdown has drawn widespread criticism within and outside of Syria.

President Barack Obama on Wednesday imposed tough sanctions against President Bashar al-Assad and six other senior Syrian officials in an effort to stop the regime's fierce crackdown on protests, the U.S. Treasury Department said.

The Treasury Department also targeted two top Iranian officials whose unit was a "conduit for Iranian material support" to Syrian intelligence.

This comes on the same day a Syrian newspaper reported the president's acknowledgment that security forces have made mistakes during the last two months of turmoil across the embattled country.

Al-Watan reported that al-Assad made the remark during a meeting with a "delegation of elders" from Damascus.

Omar Al Serwan, one of the elders, said al-Assad "revealed that some of the wrong security practices came as a result of lack of knowledge on the part of the security forces on how to handle such situations," according to Al-Watan.

However, he didn't specify what the mistakes involved.

Al-Assad said police try to avoid problems through training "so they may do the right thing and prevent such abuses," the paper said, citing Al Serwan.

Al Serwan said other aspects of the meeting were "positive and transparent." They dealt with "corruption, the judiciary, economy, trade, and education."